


Take My Arms That I Might Reach You

by DragonThistle



Series: An Echo in the Wells of Silence [2]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Healing, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Recovery, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonThistle/pseuds/DragonThistle
Summary: They say he's lucky to be alive. They say he’s lucky but he will take a long time to recover. They say he’s lucky but he’s going to need help. They say he’s lucky. And they say he might never fully recover.





	1. Chapter 1

———

_“You have heard it said that time heals all wounds, but I have found no succor in its inexorable march, no relief from the crushing burden of my loss.” - Ricky Yancey’s The Monstrumologist_

———

Tom is hospitalized as soon as the flashing lights and sirens arrive. He’s stuffed into an ambulance, yelling through split lips and blood that he’s fine and he just needs a couple of drinks. Edd and Matt feel a wrench of fear as Tom vanishes. They already thought they’d lost him once.

Eduardo screams when they try to take Jon’s body. He ends up half drugged on the back of another ambulance, crying brokenly as an emergency worker tries to tend to his wounds. But Eduardo keeps pushing them away with broken fingers and eventually they take him away amidst another round of noise and color. Mark is left blank faced and wide eyed, slumped on the sidewalk and staring at the pavement. No one’s able to get a word out of him. Shock, they say, and gently lead him away too.

Tape lines go up. Road blocks and uniforms keep back the gawking onlookers. Edd and Matt stick close to one another.

The officers ask questions. They both tell the truth. What’s the point in lying?

There’s evidence of a crash up on the hill but they find no wreckage. There is a lot of blood. Matt looks sick.

Someone tells them they’ve both suffered injuries and they need to come to the hospital. Edd asks brokenly if they can see Tom. Later, they’re told, you can see him later. The two of them climb into an ambulance and Edd tries not to watch the remains of their life—still smoldering and spitting embers and ash—fall away into the distance. 

****

Edd wakes up groggy, disoriented, and not a little bit sore. It’s dark, wherever he is, but there’s a glow of sodium yellow-orange streetlights slicing through a gap in the thick curtains nearby. It’s not a lot but it’s enough to make out shapes in the dark. There’s a dull, sickly pale green ring of numbers across the room accompanied by soft ticking—it reads 3:45.

Blankets, thick against a chemical chill, plastic bars raised on either side of him, and a tube in his arm.

The labored breathing of someone else in the room.

His first reaction is panic before his sleepy mind catches up.

The hospital, he’s at the hospital. His arm was dislocated and they’re keeping him overnight because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. And the police want to ask more questions. So the other person in the room is probably another patient. Nothing to worry about. They’re sleeping, just like he was. He tries to remember what woke him, remembers a smeared dream of screaming and laughter and blood and rubble and decides he doesn’t want to remember anymore.

He shifts on the bed, trying to get comfortable again, and hisses when he jostles his arm.

The other person in the room makes a soft noise and there’s a shifting of fabric. Edd freezes, eyes wide in the dark, staring at the curtain separating the two beds. Another shuffle, a shivering grunt, and then the breathing falls back into a rhythmic, if jittery, place. Edd relaxes and turns his gaze towards the sliver of streetlight dripping over the window sill and oozing towards the door.

He doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes up to the lights on and all the curtains in the room thrown open.

The bed next to his is empty.

****

 He’s free to visit his friends as long as he stays out of the way.

Edd limps on a crutch because it turns out his arm wasn’t the only thing that was damaged. There’s a nasty set of stitches down the back of his opposite leg and it causes him no great amount of pain to put weight on it. He got a very stern talking to by his attending nurse about it.

His initial plan had been to visit Tom. But Tom is still in surgery and will be in recovery for a while. He needs quiet and rest. No one can see him yet.

In the end, he finds Matt resting in another room, watching soaps on the television hanging on the wall. There are four other beds in the room but only one other one is occupied. The curtains are drawn all the way around it and there are no sounds from beyond.

“It’s Mark.” Matt says in a low voice, eyeing the closed off bed. He’s scooched over to allow Edd to sit with him on the bed, careful of Edd’s shoulder and of his own stitches and burns. Matt had caught the explosion of the control panel full blast, leaving him with nasty burns on his arms and chest and shrapnel that had bit deep into his skin. Those were going to leave scars.

“Mark? The neighbor?”

“Mhm,” Matt nods solemnly, “He’s been like that since they brought us in yesterday. He’s really in shock, I guess. I heard they might be moving him to a different part of the hospital.”

Edd feels terrible. He drops his gaze to his lap, clenching his trembling fingers into the bed sheet. His chest feels tight and it’s hard to swallow.

“Hey, um, Edd?” Matt’s voice, crystal clear through the static in his skull. He looks up to see Matt’s brow furrowed but his eyes snag on that vicious smear of purple-green marring the freckles on his friend’s face.

“Y-yeah…?”

“Do you think Tom will be okay?”

“Of course he will! It’s Tom! He—he has to be okay. I know he will be.”

“Okay. Good.”

It’s quiet for a moment and then Matt begins, “Do you think—“ He breaks off, isn’t looking at Edd.

“What?”

“No, nevermind.”

“…okay.”

Silence except for the television. Cheating wife is pregnant with someone’s baby. Cheated on husband cries and throws things. Rich uncle disapproves of both. Matt dozes off at some point when the dose of his painkillers kick in. Edd’s nodding off too when there’s a clatter. He jolts awake, eyes wide, heart racing at the sound of metal on metal.

But it’s just the curtain around Mark’s bed being drawn back.

The man himself is standing awkwardly in a hospital gown, fingers brushing the curtain slowly as if he’s admiring the texture of them. There’s a sunken look about, the arrogance sucked right out of him and leaving him gutless and empty. Mark looks up slowly, achingly slowly, and peers around the room with an uninterested, dazed sort of air about him.

He meets Edd’s gaze.

They stare at one another for what seems like an eternity. Mark has a bandage on his cheek and his wrist is in a splint. For a moment, Edd is furious that the man got away with so few injuries when he and his friends are so very hurt. But Mark and Eduardo lost Jon. The thought is sobering and fills Edd with disgust. It’s his fault; he’d let the devil in the house. It’s all his fault that this happened.

“I’m sorry,” He says hoarsely to the man slouching against the hospital bed on the other side of the room, “I didn’t mean for this. I’m sorry.”

Mark blinks, shakes his head, and pushes himself up. He shuffles towards the door and pauses when he’s about to open it. When he looks back, Edd expects anger or emptiness. Certainly not the desperate concern that is drawing hard lines on Mark’s tired face. It’s such a stunningly out of character look that Edd doesn’t know how to react and Mark’s gone by the time he comes to terms with it. He never sees Mark again after that.

Later, he thinks maybe Mark was trying forgive him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to get up. I just moved to a new apartment and the wifi isn't up yet.

Matt flinches whenever someone raises a fist near him, turns away slightly when the doctors or nurses try to check his bruised eye. He doesn’t want hands near his face. He hasn’t once asked for a mirror.

The burns and stitches on his arms and chest make it difficult for him to move freely. He’s hand fed by a tending nurse for the most part and whines about being treated like a baby. Edd visits him when he can but he’d pulled his stitches walking back from Matt’s room and the doctors are less willing to let him out of bed now.

Both of them are desperate to see Tom. He came out of surgery the morning of the second day in the hospital but is still confined to the ICU. The doctors have enough mercy to tell the remaining two the damage that’s been done their friend.

Tom has a terribly deep cut on his head. Three broken ribs. A shattered tibia in his left leg. Damage to his lungs from smoke inhalation. Severed muscles and nerves in his left arm. Shrapnel in his stomach and thighs.

He’d flat-lined once during surgery.

Matt starts crying and Edd can’t breathe. The doctor says Tom’s very lucky to be alive. They say he’s lucky but he will take a long time to recover. They say he’s lucky but he’s going to need help. They say he’s lucky. And they say he might never fully recover. 

****

Edd is wheeled back to his room and helped back into his bed by a nurse. His arm and leg hurt and he’s going to be stuck in this bed alone. Matt is getting his injuries looked at and Tom still can’t have visitors which means Edd has nothing better to do than let the pain medication lull him off to sleep.

He wakes up to the sound of the television. He squints at it blearily; some quirky game show with lots of bright colors and laughter. He sighs and is about to let himself drift off again when he remembers he never turned the television on. He’s alone in the room. He’s supposed to be alone in the room and the thought that he isn’t, the thought that something has changed, panics him and makes him struggle to sit up and take stock.

The curtain between the beds is pulled closed a little and only then it’s on the side facing the door, so Edd has a clear view of the room’s other occupant.

Eduardo.

He looks like he’s asleep. And he looks like shit. He’s pale, ragged at the edges, bags under his eyes. There’s a drip in his arm, some fingers on his left hand in a splint, and his breathing is shallow. Edd has never seen his neighbor (rival?) look so sickly and damaged.

He doesn’t like it. Something about it sets off the entire wrongness of everything the world has become. He tastes ash in his mouth and it leaves him trembling. Everything in the world has shifted, everything has slid just enough out of place that it’s gone uncanny valley on him. Edd feels sick, dizzy, he struggles to find some kind of balance, struggles to get out of bed and find his friends. He has to find Tom and Matt because if he doesn’t then this off-kilter world will swallow them whole.

Static in his ears, in his vision, clouding his senses, choking his throat. He knows he’s gripping the bars on the side of his hospital bed with his good arm but he can’t feel it, can’t feel the tug of stitches in his leg, can’t hear anything but static and muffled laughter that makes his insides cold. His vision is swimming and he doesn’t know what to do, only knows that he desperately needs to make sure Matt and Tom are okay. They have to be okay. It’s his fault. He let the devil in house. His fault. His fault, his fault, his fault his fault hisfaulthisfa u l thisfa u l t

“‘Ey, Loser, c’n ya’ shut up. ‘M tryin’ to get some sleep.”

Edd blinks rapidly, sucking in a sharp breath that makes his head spin. He’s trembling, sprawled on his bed, fingers white where they grip the bar. There’s still static buzzing through his veins.

“Oi. Hey. Loser! Hey, I’m talkin’ to you!”

It’s a slippery grasp but his fuzzy mind snags a hold of the familiar voice as he tries to remember how to breathe right.

“Edd. Hey! Edd! EDD!”

Edd looks up and sees Eduardo propped on one arm, frowning at him. He doesn’t look angry, not like Edd expects him to. It’s an unfamiliar look on Eduardo but Edd’s seen it before on the faces of his friends. He stares at Eduardo, still shaking, and slowly peels his sore fingers from the bed rail.

“Breathe, stupid. It’d be dumb if you died in the fucking hospital.” Eduardo flops back onto his own bed with a grunt and rolls over, putting his back to Edd. 

Edd swallows, sinks back onto his own pillows, and focuses on the feeling of the sheet and the sick-chemical smell of the hospital. Eduardo’s breathing regularly again; maybe he’s fallen back asleep. 

After a while, exhausted and drained, Edd slowly fades into sleep himself. It is not dreamless and he wakes restless and unrested. But it is something. It has to count for something.


	3. Chapter 3

Tom is asleep the first time Edd and Matt are allowed to visit him.

The doctors order quiet, order not to disturb him too much because Tom has a lot of recovery to go through and recovery means rest.

The wheelchairs they’re both forced to take seem too loud in the soft quiet of Tom’s hospital room. He has a room to himself, small, tucked away from the world and the reporters that keep trying to clamor for interviews. He looks too pale, his breathing too shallow. The heart monitor’s steady beeping is a small comfort.

Matt makes a small, choked noise and his eyes are watering. But he sniffs and composes himself, reaching out slowly to gently curl his fingers around Tom’s hand. There’s a small hitch in Tom’s breathing but he doesn’t stir. Matt leans against the bed, lip caught between his teeth, just gently holding his friends hands as he tries not to cry.

Edd just stares for a while, watching Tom breathe, watching the small rise and fall of his chest. After what feels like ages, he reaches a hand out and rests it on Tom’s arm, his elbow brushing against Matt who has his face buried in the blankets beside him. Tom doesn’t react, doesn’t move, just keeps sleeping.

“Tom,” Edd says in a low voice, “Hey, Tom, the police—they found your bass. They found Susan in that stupid vault you had installed.” He makes a choked noise that’s part laughter and part cut off sob, “I called you an idiot for putting that in the house, made fun of you so much. A stupid vault for your stupid old bass. B-but it saved it—her. She’s kind of in pieces but she’s—you can play her again, Tom. You can put her back together again. You can—the pieces, we just…have to pick up the pieces…”

He breaks off after that, his voice trembling. They sit quietly in the room for a long while until a couple of nurses come to fetch them back to their rooms.

****

Tom is lethargic and dazed when he finally wakes up. He doesn’t stay awake for long, spending most hours of the day dozing quietly in his lonely room, falling asleep to the drone of the television. When he is awake and coherent enough, he’s cranky and snaps at the doctors and nurses, unhappy that his injuries keep him confined to a hospital bed.

His mood hardly improves when Matt and Edd are finally allowed to visit him. At first relief lightens the thundercloud hanging over him. But when he catches sight of their injuries, his expression darkens once again. Edd notices but Matt is too busy crying happily for him to say anything; he doesn’t want to ruin the relief they all feel at finally being together again. Tom apparently doesn’t want to ruin this moment either because all he grumbles about is how clingy and weepy Matt is being while simultaneously patting the taller man on the back.

He can’t talk very well yet, his throat and lungs still sore and trashed from the smoke, but that doesn’t stop Tom from trying. He’s given several stern lectures by the attending nurses and doctor about permanently damaging his voice but it isn’t until he has a debilitating coughing fit that he relents. The medication keeps him drowsy and docile.

Edd hates it.

Edd hates what this place is doing to all of them. They feel drained, desaturated, as if some of the life has been sucked out of them. It kills him a little bit every time he sees Matt cringe away from someone’s touch. It causes him a physical ache to see the unstoppable Tom so vulnerable and tired. It floods him with crushing guilt to see Eduardo’s broken fingers and his sickly pallor in the bed next door.

He knows he shouldn’t but Edd blames himself.

He opened the doors.

He welcomed the devil into the house with open arms.

****

When the police try to question Tom, he is uncooperative and snappish, scoffing at them through a half drugged haze.

“Haven’t you given those journalist vultures enough to play with?” He whips the words out at the nonplussed officers, a dark scowl on his face, “I’m sure Matt n’ Edd have already told you everything. What do you need from me?”

“Your statement, Thomas. It’s standard procedure.”

“Don’t call me Thomas.”

It goes less than smoothly.

Edd finds out about the wanted poster, about the exchange in the hidden lab, about the secret experiments. He throws up when he learns this isn’t the first time Tord has done permanent damage to Tom.

“That was you…” He wheezes, clinging to the edges of the small rubbish bin as Matt rubs soothing circles on his back, “That was you that Eduardo—when we both had powers and—oh god, Tom, I’m sorry…!”

Tom shrugs and winces at the lance of pain it drives up his injured arm, “’S not a big deal, Edd. It’s not like I had control or anything. It doesn’t matter, okay, just forget about it.” He’s looking towards the ceiling, the black void of his eyes sucking in the light as he tiredly traces the tiles, “I don’t want to think about it. Once we get out of here, we’ll go to that apartment building. Get you guys set up with a new place. It’ll be like nothing changed.”

“But everything’s changed,” Matt says, still with his arm around Edd’s shoulders, “Everything’s gone and it’s all changed.”

“Then let’s just fucking play pretend.” Tom’s voice is a sour whisper from the back of his throat.

Matt shrinks back a little and looks at the floor. Edd swallows, grimacing at the terrible taste in his mouth, and looks back up at Tom. The air is bitter.`

“Tom,” Edd says carefully and Tom grunts to show he’s listening, “I…don’t know if you heard me—I said it when you were still sleeping—but they found Susan.” Tom instantly perks up, turning to face Edd with a look of stunned hopefulness on his face. Edd smiles and tells him everything.

****

Edd bursts into tears when he’s told that Ringo has been found, shaken and covered in ashes and dirt but alive. He’s being looked after at a nearby animal hospital where he can stay until Edd is ready to settle into a new place. Edd begs them to let him see his cat but his requests are denied. The kindly staff at the animal hospital do send some photographs and Edd props them against the Get Well cards and flowers on his bedside stand.

He expects Eduardo to make fun of him. But there’s nothing.

There’s a lot of people talking to Eduardo and Edd tries very hard not to listen when he’s in the same room. But he picks up that it’s about funeral arrangements. There is a lot of crying from an old couple. Someone tells Eduardo to stop acting like a pussy and get over himself.

Edd feigns sleep and, when the visitors leave, he pretends not to hear the muffled, choked off sounds of crying from the bed next to his.


	4. Chapter 4

Eduardo is released and when Edd asks where he’s gone, the staff say it’s a matter of privacy. Edd stares at the empty bed as they check his shoulder and tug out the stitches in his leg. He thinks, maybe, he should have spoken to his former neighbor more.

There is only a note left behind in Eduardo’s surprisingly neat handwriting. A date, a time, a location. Edd doesn’t need to think too long on what it’s for.

****

Tom is going through physical therapy to try and get his arm back in working order. He always returns frustrated and tired and angry at himself. It’s slow going and the lack of mobility in his left arm has him struggling with a lot of daily activities. It’s hard to put a shirt on or brush your teeth when your arm can’t be raised above your shoulder.

It’s slow, but he’s making progress.

****

Matt gets his stitches out and celebrates by taking Edd out to the place where Tom had already purchased a flat. It’s a nice place, reasonable, quaint, homey. There are more open flats available on the same floor.

Their names are scrawled onto lines and arrangements are made.

They both leave with a set of keys.

****

Both Edd and Matt are released with painkillers to take and strict instructions on how to take care of their still healing injuries. They take up tentative residence in their new homes, unfurnished, empty spaces ready to fill with new memories.

Most of their time is still spent with Tom at the hospital.

He’s recovering rapidly, far quicker than the doctor’s think should be possible. The trio shares a knowing glance and Edd wonders how no one knows that Tom can sprout horns and claws.

****

Though he is required to return for weekly checkups and therapy sessions, Tom is finally freed from the hospital.

With much grumbling and fussing and great reluctance, Tom bids the staff farewell from his chair as he’s wheeled out to Edd’s car. Rental car. A replacement is being handled.

A lot of things are being handled.

****

Edd can count on his fingers how many belongings they have between the three of them. Very little survived the explosion.

In both the physical and metaphorical sense.

****

The funeral is horrible.

To be more precise, the funeral is very nice and put together. But the experience is horrible.

Matt is sick in the early hours of the morning and by the time the sun is actually starting to rise, Tom has already broken open his first bottle. Edd tries to get him to put it down a couple of times but Tom straight up ignores him until he goes away so Edd gives up and lets him drink. If Edd had less self control, he thinks he’d probably be drinking too.

As it is, he’s playing mother today.

He limits Tom’s access to the alcohol (at least until later) and makes sure his injured friend isn’t pushing himself too much. He needn’t worry, Tom doesn’t seem to inclined to be active at all; it takes a lot of prying just to get him to leave his room. Edd’s nothing, if not patient.

That patience extends to Matt, as well. He dries Matt’s tears and gently coaxes him into getting ready for the day. There are times he has to be a bit firm with the ginger because Matt does not like the drab, the dreary, the downcast, the sad. It’s even worse that on the occasion they did have a chance to speak, Matt got along quite well with Jon.

So did Edd, really.

This is hard on all three of them.

Edd drives. Tom is nursing a buzz in the passenger seat, dazedly watching the world roll by them through the window. It’s overcast but just sunny enough to be irritating. Tom mutters how he’s glad it’s not raining because how fucking cliche would that be. No one responds to him and he lapses into a tired sort of silence.

****

Jon’s parents are nice people and they thank Matt for his condolences and for being such good neighbors. Edd can’t look them in the eye and Tom slumps on his crutch, fingering the flask in his pocket.

The funeral passes in a haze.

Eduardo gives a choked off, halting speech that no one really remembers. He apologizes at the end of it, words of regret spilling out of his mouth. He wishes he had been kinder, he wishes he hadn’t said the things he said, he wishes, he wishes, he wishes. He’s sobbing by the end of it. A lot of people are crying. Edd feels hollowed out and ill. Afterwards, in the milling quiet of snacks and hushed talking, he abandons the intoxicated Tom to Matt’s gentle tending and wanders around until he finds Eduardo. His former neighbor is starring at a board tacked with pictures of Jon from child to adulthood.

“Eduardo?”

“What the hell do you want?” The usual gruffness is a void that’s been rubbed raw by tears.

Edd opens his mouth, closes it, looks at the board containing Jon’s life.

He can’t think of anything to say.


	5. epilogue

Betrayal is an awful, dirty thing.

It leaves a sour taste in the mouth, a wrenched open hole in the gut, the phantom pain of a knife in the spine.

He wonders, sometimes, if this is how the other three felt.

He remembers the shattered expression on Edd’s face, the look of complete and utter loss, the hurt. He remembers the confusion in Matt’s eyes, the incomprehension turning to horror as realization had dawned. He remembers the hurt fury radiating from Tom like a bonfire, the disgust, the frightened anger.

He sees red.

Tord lays quietly on his side, staring into the dark room, eyes lidded. He is tired, his body worn, still recovering from the aftermath of that awful end. It feels like weakness. It feels like a constant reminder. It feels like revenge. It feels like the world laughing at him, mocking him. It feels like failure.

The stump where his arm used to be.

The twisted skin on his face.

The ruined eye.

The limp in his walk.

Reminders.

He shifts slightly and winces at the taunt pull of bandages and ruined flesh. Tord sucks in a breath, feels it sear down his throat, feels the mangled skin of his chest expand, and wonders how many breaths he has left.

He wants to be angry. Fuck, but he wants to be angry. He wants to find that undefinable rage that had been burning in Matt’s eyes when the house had exploded. He wants a shred of that desperate fury that had finally made Edd turn on him. He wants to match the furious hatred that had fueled Tom’s last stand and Tord’s ultimate fall.

But he doesn’t have the energy.

Tord listens to the quiet and wishes for the background murmurings of the base.

Too weak to be there. Can’t have Red Leader seen like this. Have to be strong for his soldiers.

At one time, Tord thought he could have convinced them to join him. He could have given them everything. They could have been safe.

Naive.

Look where it’s gotten him.

He winces at the phantom pains beyond the bandages binding what’s left of his arm.

Revenge is an entertaining theory to nurse while he’s stuck in bed, but unrealistic in the long run. Revenge is not his goal. He will not be blinded by it. He’s already lost one eye, no need to lose the other.

A hoarse, bitter chuckle escapes him and it sounds loud in the quiet of the room.

Revenge is petty and stupid. As bitter and harsh as the reality of betrayal still sinking a sickening pit into his stomach. It will get him nowhere. It’s better to ignore them, forget them. He has bigger plans than three—

Civilians.

All he ever wanted was the world.

He hates the tiny, muffled voice in the back of his mind that says that house had been his world.

He destroyed it. No going back.

He’s got a new world to make and this time, no one’s going to betray him.

He’ll make sure of it.


End file.
